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Six ways to maximise the impact of your content marketing

With so many brands now recognising the importance of producing regular, fresh, and high quality content though, it can sometimes feel like you’re simply churning out great work that gets forgotten the very next day.

So what’s the solution? Instead of focusing on the quantity of content we are creating, we should shift our energy towards the quality.

One amazing, creative piece of content can go a long way, and actually end up making more of an impact than ten smaller pieces of content will.

Instead of racking your brain for multiple different pieces of content to create each day, think about how you can work with one blog post or white paper and really push the boundaries to get the most out of it.

The average blog post actually takes more than five hours to produce from ideation to publication, and bigger pieces of content like white papers, eBooks, and infographics taken even longer than this, so it’s important to have a strong content distribution plan in place and to understand the different ways in which you can repurpose your content to really make the most out of it.

Here are six ways to maximise the impact of your content and make every piece of it count:

Use different content formats

So you’ve done some research and gathered some data – now what? Instead of just putting it straight onto your site, think about all the different formats you could use to present your information.

Create a blog post containing all the top line statistics and results, then display these statistics visually through an infographic or some shareable images.

A snapshot of an Econsultancy infographic to promote the Cross-Channel Marketing Report 2014

If you have produced a white paper, you could break that down into a series of more digestible blog posts or even turn it into a downloadable eBook.

Videos are becoming more popular in the world of content creation too. Once a video has been published, it’s a good idea to transcribe it, as this will help search engines to read it, and you could also turn it into some audio based content, like a podcast.

Different audiences like different content formats, so you need to think of the different demographics you are targeting and what they want to see.

By repurposing your content in a range of different formats, you are maximising its visibility and getting the best results from your content marketing efforts.

Utilise social media channels

Social media channels are a fantastic place to get your content seen online and offer brands a good platform for content distribution.

Social media posts need to be short and snappy to grab the attention of the reader, so pull out key statistics from your content, and write engaging social posts.

Choose an eye-catching image, write some compelling copy, and add a link to your landing page to drive traffic to your site.

Use a social media tool like Buffer to schedule your posts at the time your audience is online, and create a range of different posts for the different stats and facts mentioned in your original content.

Don’t just focus on the main social media channels like Facebook and Twitter though, LinkedIn is great for sharing B2B related posts, and Pinterest and Instagram are platforms that have a huge audience to share your visual content with.

Actively encourage the next step

You want your content to be read and shared, so there is no harm in asking people to do just that.

Many blogs don’t have easy-to-use social sharing buttons, and many that do don’t even display the share count.

It’s important to make it as easy as possible for users to share your content, and by showing a share counter you can utilise social proof and encourage others to share, getting the engagement ball rolling.

Comments are another great way to boost engagement around your content, but a surprising number of blogs either don’t have a comment feature. Others make users take so many steps to leave a comment that they get put off altogether.

A platform like Disqus provides sites with an easy way to encourage conversation and quickly reply to people, meaning they can encourage users to come back time and time again.

If you want to keep users on your site and boost the chance of them converting, then it may be worth adding a “related content” section somewhere on your blog.

This means that once the user has finished reading your content, they are instantly encouraged to read something similar without actually leaving your site.

This will show your audience that you are a thought-leader within your industry and your site is a content hub they can return to when they want to read more.

Make it responsive

One of the main causes of a high bounce rate is non-responsive content on a mobile or tablet device. Google announced its new mobile algorithm in April, so all marketers should now only be creating content that is not only mobile responsive, but that also focuses on mobile usability.

Mobile content consumption is dramatically increasing each year, so if brands aren’t providing users with a satisfactory experience through mobile, they may lose their audience to competitors who are.

Your content needs to respond to whatever screen size it is being viewed on and image sizes need to be small enough to not affect page load speed.

It’s also important to think about all the other elements surrounding your content. Your call to actions, social sharing buttons, and search functionality should all be the same on mobile as they are on desktop.

Make the most of email

An email list can be one of the most important digital assets you have available when it comes to content distribution.

While the visibility you have on search engines and the reach you have on social media reach can largely be limited by different algorithms, the reach your email marketing campaigns have is solely dictated by your own strategy and levels of effort and determination.

You may already have a list of emails from previous and potential customers, but it’s easy enough to build a larger database.

Set up a simple newsletter sign up option on your site, host an online contest that requires contact detail submission or create a lead-gen offer that can only be redeemed with an email address.

Once you have an email list, create an email marketing campaign around your piece of content. Keep the email short and sweet, but include a link to your content and a call to action.

Make sure your content is relevant to your subscribers, and make sure it provides them with value – if they like and trust your brand, then they are likely to find your content interesting and want to read more of it.

To conclude…

Creating high quality content on a regular basis is not easy, especially if you are a relatively small business.

Every piece of content you create is precious – you put time and effort into researching it, writing it up, creating visuals, and publishing it, so it is important to make the most out of it and generate the best results you can.

To do this, you need to consider all the different content formats available, work out how it can be repurposed, decide who your target audience is, and put a solid content distribution plan in place.

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